We are Wormwood (18 page)

The violent air sliced my arms and legs. We couldn’t go out
there. Anything could be out there. And everything WILL be out there.
The machine and its temporal lobe shattering noise.
The heat of the river that could crush my lungs like a collapsing
cave.
Monsters that climbed into plants and made them
angry, angry, angry.

Yet the tiles behind us were crumbling away. Steam rose out
of the rubble like the sweat of hot-blooded plants.

We ran into the parking lot. The Witch pulled up in Saint
Peter’s van. The demon threw open the passenger side and we piled in. The Witch
peeled off.

She was laughing, honest to god, laughing.

She jerked the van to cut across the middle of the parking
lot. My cheek slammed against the window.

“What’s so fucking funny?” I said, pressing my hands against
my cheek, which was already beginning to bruise.

“She visited you,” The Witch said, “but she couldn’t kill
you. Not yet. Oh god, she was so angry.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m magic, babyheart.”

We raced down an empty highway in the middle of the night.
The old tires squealed with the effort. The engine smoked, and its burning,
acrid smell filled the entire van.

It still couldn’t overpower the smell of machine oil.

I knew there were all sorts of things behind us in the dark.
Squirming things, wet angry things.
Ghosts who could
rearrange themselves into the shapes of my guilt.
Those
stupid fucking plants.

And The Nightcatcher herself, child’s
hands, rage that could stretch planets.

There wouldn’t be a hospital to go back to. There wouldn’t
be a reprieve, ever again.

The demon panted into my throat. She gripped me by the
wrists.

Then The Witch stopped laughing.

“There’s something in the road,” she said.

It happened in less than two seconds.

“There’s something in the road. Somethingsomething. In
thethetheroadtheroad.”

She slammed on the brakes, and the van flipped.

One last chance, I thought to myself. If I remembered how to
open my eyes I’d wake up, back in the hospital.

The demon’s tiny body slammed against my sternum. My stomach
dropped as we turned over and over in the van. I should’ve worn a seatbelt.
Saint Peter reached for me and fell over my head. All the windows of the van
shattered. A set of house keys, left on the bottom of the van for months,
pierced my shoulder like a knife.

Then the van stopped rolling. I fumbled for an exit. The
crumbled glass, still left on the edges of the window, sliced into my fingers.

“Oh god,” Saint Peter said.

A carnivorous plant reached through the van and pulled me
across the highway. I tried to resist, make my body go limp, but it only pulled
me harder. My elbows and knees scraped against the asphalt, leaving behind skin
and blood.

It dragged me into the forest, away from the highway.

I grabbed its head and squeezed. It secreted acid. The skin
on my hands was already peeling away. The acid followed the lines of my veins,
through my wrists, my elbows.

A girl leaned against a tree and lit a cigarette. She wore
mud-caked pumps, her exposed legs scaly and green.

“Do you like her?” she asked of the carnivorous plant, in a
familiar, smoky-dipped voice.

I clenched my arms, gritting my teeth, heaving with pain.

“Phaedra?” I asked, “Phaedra, why couldn’t you have gotten a
cat like everyone else?”

“I did. As I recall your girlfriend ate its eyes.”

THE
PLANT’S HEAD
released me, and I fell backwards.

My head hit the ground. I struggled to get up, but Phaedra
kicked me over with her heel.

“Stay down, loser,” she said. “I have things to tell you and
you’re going to listen for once.”

That cold little bitch, she loved every moment of this. She
always wanted to be a noir femme fatale. She probably had wet dreams of this
moment, when she could act the Miss Poison Ivy, have me prostrate on the ground,
while she lazily smoked a cigarette.

“Well you better hurry up and tell me,” I said. “I’m a busy
girl.”

“You’re a lazy, drug addicted coward,” she said.

“And you’re a sociopath. I thought that’s why we were such
great friends.”

She pressed her muddy pump into my throat.

“Did you ever think about anyone besides yourself? You
could’ve stopped for one moment and looked behind your shoulder. Instead you
left us all. Me, Cignus, your mother.”

“I thought you could take care of yourself.”

Her pump crushed my throat and I couldn’t speak without
pain. Dirt and grit touched the back of my throat. The cold air pushed its way
into my split knuckles.

“Tell me what you’re going to tell me, bitch,” I said.

She released my throat, and I started coughing.

“Shut up and look,” she said.

She held her wrists out. There were holes in her skin,
pierced through the bone. Her entire body was covered in holes and drained of
blood.

She slipped her still-lit cigarette through the hole in her
wrist and pushed it out the other side.

Through the holes in her body, the river poured, boiling and
red. I dragged myself away from her, across the dirt.

The river seeped through my shoes and scalded me. I cried
out and grabbed a tree limb to try and pull myself out of the water. Phaedra
shuddered, like she was trying to laugh but couldn’t quite remember how.

“She’s behind you,” Phaedra said.

I looked into the dark, out into the place where the river
flowed, beneath the trees and dense clouds. The river rushed to her, parted
around her, this creature blackened and bristling. She smiled at me with a
glowing mouth, and then she fled.

“Phaedra!” I called, but she was gone.

The river was gone.

I ran back to the highway. Saint Peter and the demon were
climbing out of the wrecked van. Saint Peter, miraculously, still clutched the
hunter’s bow and the quiver of arrows.

“Where’s Genie?” I asked.

“Still in the van. We don’t have a phone,” Saint Peter said,
limping toward me. “We can’t call an ambulance.”

She bled in places stigmata couldn’t reach. The demon bled
from her forehead, her skin a network of shredded glass. Her wormwood eyes were
so bright and big; they could’ve caused traffic accidents.

I went around the van to the driver’s seat. The Witch
lay
upside down, unconscious or dead, her neck at an
unnatural angle against the steering wheel. Her legs were crushed behind her
back.

“Can we move her?” I said.

“What if her neck’s broken? We could kill her.”

She coughed up blood, but didn’t wake.

I went back to Saint Peter.

“Give me the bow,” I said.

She stared past me, as if she’d heard me calling from the
other side of the woods. She had a concussion, probably. And I didn’t even know
if there was a hospital within the nearest fifty miles. Not after the one we
just left collapsed in on itself.

“It’s mine, isn’t it?” I said, and outstretched my hand.
“Give it to me.”

Saint Peter handed me the hunter’s bow. It felt warm and
familiar in my hands.

“Where are you going?” Saint Peter asked.

“I’m going after the thing that did this,” I said. “Stay with
Genie. Flag down a vehicle if you can.”

“I’m going with you.”

“I said stay here. So fuck you and stay here.”

I looked at the demon, who stood beside me, shining and
broken.

“Come with me.”

I
CHASED AFTER The Nightcatcher
, and the demon followed. I slung the bow and
quiver of arrows across my back as we ran across the highway into the woods.
The distant city threw its light across the trees. The shadows of skyscrapers
tattooed my arms.

The trees opened up like a mouth. Come here. Let me eat you.
They were monster-headed, their foliage like claws.

The puddles underneath us were full of stars and the stars
were riddled with holes.

The city light reflected like glitter in the demon’s cheeks
and her skin shone night silk. She touched my hand and squeezed. I squeezed
back.

The bowstring dug into my aching cuts.

“Why did she take Phaedra?” I asked. “Why would anyone?”

“Maybe she wanted to be taken.”

The demon clung fast to me. I’d become used to her smell,
its cool crispness, almost blankness, like the smell of ice. I thought I could
even become used to the spiders that sat engorged on her fingernails, or the
larvae that occasionally dripped down my shirt.

“She’s not here anymore,” the demon said. ”Let’s go home.
I’ll make you warm.”

And I might have turned back, except I smelled The Nightcatcher’s
molting fur hanging off the tree branches. She’d run through here and left her
scent behind. If we didn’t walk fast enough, it would contaminate our blood.

“She’s not here,” the demon said.

I wanted to believe the demon, I really did. I wanted to
think that the shape at the end of the path was only a scarecrow swaying in the
breeze, and that the way the moon shone down, only gave an illusion of that
sleek textured fur. I wanted to believe that the thing didn’t move when I took
a step and tilted its head to regard me.

It skittered away into the trees.

Nightcatcher, was it you who tried to destroy my mother? Was
it you who called to her that night I found her being devoured alive?

The trees rustled.

The demon crouched and scratched at the dirt. Her living
hair caught my throat and black widows scurried across my fingers. I unslung
the bow from my back.

I’d used this bow before. It fit the shape of my hands, as
if worn down through the years. Saint Peter had kept it safe for me, until the
time I asked for it back. There was a memory buried within me, a distant,
darkened memory of a ship rocking
underneath me and a great
creature rising out of great waters
.

I knew how to notch the arrow and aim.

I knew I needed to breathe to slow the world down, or I’d
miss my shot.

Inhale. Exhale.

The trees rustled behind the demon. I turned, and there she
was.

Learn to breathe.
Heh heh heh heh.
Slow it down. Slower. Learn to breathe, even though the air is turning to
poison and your lungs are filling with smoke.

The Nightcatcher had poisoned my entire life, but it could
end here. I could reverse this. My mother and I might be schizophrenic, but if The
Nightcatcher was real, I could go home tonight with her head in my travel bag
and tell my mother there was nothing left to fear. There'd never be another
night where The Nightcatcher crept into our home and forced her to swallow
bleach.

I aimed the bow at her. I pulled the drawstring back and
dropped my shoulders.

“Don’t,” the demon said.

I breathed in.

“Don’t.”

I breathed out.

Her head emerged from the trees. She reached down, not with
two hands but eight. Her eyes were baby blue.

I shot her and she tumbled into the dirt.

I stood still for a moment, panting. I thought she must’ve
feigned injury, waiting for me to come close. But then I saw the arrow,
embedded into her skin, and her blackened blood splashed against the leaves.

As I walked toward The Nightcatcher, she twitched and
genuflected. I pulled the drawstring back, ready for the killing blow.

But when she lifted her head up, I saw it wasn't The Nightcatcher
at all.

It was the baby-faced spider, her mouth opening and closing
as she gasped for air, blowing black bubbles from her ruined lungs. It was the
same little Arachne that Momma once took me down into the woods to watch die.

I lowered the bow and I slumped into the grass. My hands
couldn’t clench the bow anymore, and it fell from my fingers.

The spider child gurgled.

“I told you,” the demon said.

I tore at the grass and when I looked down, my hands were
full of blue flowers.

Baby Arachne reached for me. The fine hairs of her limb
brushed against the back of my hand. As gently as I could, I took that limb in
my hand and kissed its furry tip.

“I’m so sorry,” I said.

Baby Arachne sighed and, just as it happened years ago, she
slipped away.

I turned to the demon.

"You've got a little something," the demon said,
and touched her lips.

I rubbed my mouth with the back of my hands and it was
black.

***

That night, the demon and I dug a grave for baby Arachne
with our bare hands. Dirt pushed its way through my split knuckles, but I
didn’t dare stop digging. Maybe The Witch was dead, and Saint Peter had fallen
asleep on the side of the road with a concussion, but I didn’t dare. I kept
swallowing, but I couldn’t swallow the grit in my teeth and on my tongue.

Let my blood mix into the dirt, let the baby Arachne’s black
ichor stain every bed sheet I ever climb onto. I pulled the arrow out of her
side, and it came out with a sick little puckered noise.

It was I who pushed the dirt over her head. It was I who
covered her mound with flowers.

I bit down on my bleeding knuckles. I pushed my head into
the soft mound. The demon held me.

WHILE
THE DEMON AND
I were in the woods, Saint Peter managed to flag down a car
and get her and Genie to a hospital. The van was totaled and towed to a scrap
yard.

The demon and I headed back alone. I didn’t know how many
miles we were from home, or if there was even a home left at all. I couldn’t
trust myself anymore. Once I had a brain, not riddled in holes, a body, not on
the verge of falling apart, a time, where I could crawl into my bed and not
have to wonder if I’d wake up in the middle of an underground ocean.